The Vasant Valley School Science Magazine

Martian Settlements

The Martian City

By Aryaman Kapur

March 2017

The UAE is one of the richest countries in the world because of the oil and gas produced over there. The revenue from those 2 products has developed the UAE at a rapid pace and so in their quest to become the richest and most successful country in the world they have made another plan, which will bring the future to the present.

On the 14th of February Sheikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum tweeted “The project to be named Mars 2117 integrates a vision to create a mini city and community on Mars involving international co-operation.” The Sheikh of the UAE announced that in 100 years humans would be able to inhabit and colonise Mars. Maktoum said “Human ambitions have no limits, and whoever looks into the scientific breakthrough in the current century believes that human abilities can realise the most important human dream”. The UAE also said that this project would help everyone understand the red planet even better. It is said that the population of the mini city will be about 600,000 people. However, there are several tough conditions humans will have to defeat to create a habitat on Mars. Mars has a thin atmosphere and 95% of it is carbon dioxide. Its atmosphere is about 100 times thinner than the Earth’s atmosphere and is without a thermal blanket. Thus,Mars cannot retain any heat energy. On an average, the temperature on Mars is -60 degrees Celsius.Thus, weather and quality of life on Mars could be very unpredictable. In order to combat this, a huge pod will cover the UAE mini city.

It is said that Mars 2117 will have an Emirati scientific team that will include international scientists. They would mainly be researching about how quickly to get to Mars and how quickly to come back. The UAE space agency tied up with the British and French space agencies and they are planning to send an unmanned space probe to Mars by 2021, so Mars 2117 will not be their first space mission.

Mars 2117 isn’t the first project to inhabit Mars either. Inventor and founder of Tesla motors, Elon Musk also created a project known as Space X and he said that this project will help humanity establish a self-sustaining colony on Mars within the next 50 to 100 years.

But, The UAE has a slight advantage for this space program and that advantage is wealth. That is why it seems so realistic for them to colonise Mars in the next 100 years. Even though Stephen Hawking stated that humanity has a 1000 years left on Earth, these creative futuristic plans could, well save us. If project Mars 2117 actually works out then for all us human beings it will be a bonus life, just like what we get in a video game…